Be social: Using Twitter to Build Your Contact List

It’s not easy to create and maintain relationships in 140 characters or less. Don’t get us wrong: we love Twitter (don’t hesitate to say Hi to @cakemail!), but sometimes, we have a lot to say. At those times, we use Twitter to tease about the topic, and expand on it: either on our blog, our website or our newsletters. Another thing we love about Twitter is its special way of getting people to sign up to your newsletters. The feature is called their “Lead Generation Card”. It’s a kind of ad that allows people to sign up to a newsletter in a click. Alternatively, you can use the direct link to the form, and include it in a Tweet that asks people to sign up.

Create the card

When you see the “Select a campaign objective” screen, select “Leads on Twitter”

Personalize the card

Give the campaign a descriptive name, like “Newsletter Sign up“

Choose whether you want to start the campaign immediately and continuously OR have a specific start and end date

Compose a tweet to accompany the card. For example, you can show the kind of perks they get if they sign up

Choose a really stunning image to accompany the tweet. This image will be saved, and you’ll be able to reuse this setup in the future. The image should be a rectangle that’s 800 pixels wide by 200 pixels wide

Click on “Call to action” to display the “Set up the lead generation card” pop up, fill in the fields and “Save”

How it works:

The card will expand when someone clicks on the tweet.

The following information will be automatically pulled from the Twitter account of the subscriber-to-be:

Name

Twitter handle

Email address

As soon as they click on the button the contact will see a confirmation by Twitter regarding their subscription